Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/526

Rh 484 NICHOLAS old Eoman feudatory barons had caused to be consecrated, under the name of Benedict X., John, cardinal bishop of Velletri, who, however, was speedily deposed. The elec tion of Nicholas had been brought about by Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII.), and his whole pontificate derived its character from that master-spirit. Its first act of historical importance was the framing by the second Lateran council (April 1050) of the decree which vested the election of popes in the cardinal bishops in the first instance, the assent of the cardinal priests and deacons being next required, then that of the laity, and finally that of the emperor. It was at the same council that Berengarius of Tours was temporarily induced to admit the doctrine of the corporeal presence in the sacrament. In the following June Nicholas visited Apulia, accepted the submission of the Normans, and removed the ban of excommunication, investing Richard in the principality of Capua and Robert Guiscard in the dukedom of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. He died at Florence in June 1061, and was succeeded by Alexander II. NICHOLAS III. (Giovanni Gaetano), a member of the noble house of Orsini, succeeded John XXI. as pope on November 25, 1277. Though his election was doubtless largely due to family influence, he was also personally a man of good endowments, and the record of his brief pontificate has more than one touch fitted to recall the grander manner of some of the greatest popes. In 1278 he extorted from the newly-elected and insecurely seated Rudolph of Hapsburg an absolute cession of the Romagna and of the exarchate of Ravenna, and in the same year he deprived Charles of Anjou of his vicariate of Tuscany ; in the following year he compelled Charles to renounce his dignity of senator of Rome also, declaring himself per petual senator, and his nephew Orso his vicar. He was understood to be planning with Rudolph an entirely new distribution of the thrones of the empire, by which the royal dignity was to be conferred on more than one member of the house of Orsini, when a stroke of apoplexy brought his career to a sudden close on August 22, 1280. Towards the beginning of his reign he repaired and strengthened the Lateran palace, and greatly enlarged the Vatican. For his simoniacal nepotism he has been placed by Dante in the third &quot; bolgia &quot; of the eighth circle of hell (Inf., xix. 31 sq.). The successor of Nicholas III. was Martin IV. NICHOLAS IV. (Girolamo de Ascoli), pope from February 22, 1288, to April 4, 1292, was born at Ascoli, of humble parentage. At an early age he entered the Franciscan order, of which he rose to be general in 1274, after the death of Bonaventura. It was in this capacity that in 1278 he condemned Roger Bacon to imprisonment on account of his writings. He subsequently became bishop of Prseneste; and he was created cardinal by Nicholas III. Repeated meetings of the conclave upon the death of Honorius IV. resulted, ten months after the vacancy had occurred, in the election of Ascoli, whose first and almost only historical act was to annul the solemn treaty by which Charles the Lame (of Anjou) had obtained from Alphonso III. of Aragon his release from prison, &quot; the most monstrous exercise of the absolving power which had ever been advanced in the face of Christendom&quot; (Milman). The revival of the old and expiring enthusiasm of the crusading epoch was a cause he had much at heart ; and it was partly at least with the object of stirring up the Mongols against the hated Saracens that he gave John of Monte Corvino and other members of his order their missions to China. The fall of Ptolemais, the last remnant of the Christian dominion in Palestine (1291), greatly affected him, and combined with other disappointments to hasten his death. Celcstine V. succeeded. NICHOLAS V. (Tommaso Parentucelli), the pope whose name is most intimately associated with the revival of learn ing, was the son of a physician, and was born at Sarzana, near Spezzia, in 1389. He received a good education at Bologna, became tutor in the Albizzi and Strozzi families at Florence, and ultimately entered into the service of Albergata, bishop of Bologna. He accompanied his patron on several embassies, and gained so high a reputation for diplomatic ability and for learning that shortly after Albergata s death he himself obtained the see of Bologna,, was sent by Eugenius IV. on an embassy into Germany,, and in December 1446 was made a cardinal. In less than, three months he was pope in succession to Eugenius, a. small majority of the electors, indisposed to the strongest candidate, Cardinal Prospero Colonna, having united upon Parentucelli as a man who had made no enemies. His policy as pope seemed clearly marked out for him. The church was reaching the end of a period of strife and schism. The firmness of Eugenius IV. had at length almost beaten down the emperor, the antipope, and the council of Basel ; the wisdom and moderation of Nicholas V. completed the work. Within two years the emperor made peace, the antipope abdicated, and the council dissolved itself.. Nicholas hoped for a period of tranquillity, and determined to exhibit the papacy to the world as the protector of art and learning. &quot; To the demand of Germany for reforma tion,&quot; says Mr Creighton, &quot;he answered by offering culture.&quot; He aimed especially at making Rome archi tecturally a worthy capital of the Christian world : he repaired its fortifications, began the rebuilding of its. cathedral, enlarged and adorned its thoroughfares, and traced much of the plan of restoration executed by his, successors. But his great glory was his active co-operation in the revival of learning. He collected manuscripts from all quarters, caused them to be multiplied by transcription, commissioned the most competent scholars to translate Greek books into Latin, and gathered around him the most distinguished humanists of his day, Poggio Bracciolini, Valla, Filelfo. Under him the papacy regained much of its former lustre, and till late in his reign his administration was disturbed by no unfortunate events. In January 1453 the conspiracy of Stefano Porcaro was detected on the eve of breaking out. The pope and cardinals were to have been seized, their effects pillaged, and Rome declared a republic. Nicholas was terrified, and showed himself angry and cruel. On May 29 of the same year Constan tinople was taken by the Turks. The fault was not the pope s, who had ineffectually sent his galleys to the rescue ; yet he could not but feel that a stain had fallen upon his pontificate. He proclaimed a crusade, but this was an undertaking for which he was constitutionally unfit ; he failed to kindle the zeal of others, and many doubted his, own. Exhausted by repeated attacks of gout, he died on March 24, 1455. Before his death he summoned the cardinals, and enumerated the good works he had been enabled to perform, &quot; by God s blessing of peace and tranquillity in my days.&quot; These last words sufficiently express the general scope of his policy. He was rather a scholar than an ecclesiastic or a statesman, yet enough of both to perform his part on the world s stage with sufficient credit; it is, however, his principal distinction to have been a learned and art-loving pope, and to have formed that alliance between the papacy and intellectual culture which subsisted for the next hundred years. He was suc ceeded by Calixtus III. NICHOLAS V. (Pietro di Corvara), antipope in Italy from 1328 to 1330, during the pontificate of John XXII. at Avignon, was a native of the Abruzzi and a member of the Franciscan order. He owed his nomination to the papacy, and his election (May 12, 1328) by popular